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Excerpt from the Thaw Catalog:
Daggers of this type were manufactured in England or Scotland for the western Canadian fur trade during the early decades of the 19th century. Their hand-carved handles of horn or bone always show brass and bone discs around the rivets that hold the steel blade in place. It seems that Fort Garry, present-day Winnipeg, was the major distribution point of these well-crafted knives, for most of the knife sheaths were decorated with loom-woven quillwork of Red River Ojibwa type and/or the delicate floral quillwork in which the local Metis women specialized. Sotheby's 1992, lot 118; Vincent 1995a, p.43.